2263 
1876 

(re 


SB    22    7b7 


THE  REAL  ISSUES  OF  THE  CANVASS; 


OR, 


AJST    ADDRESS 


BY 


PARKE   .GODWIN. 


DELIVERED  AT  THE  COOPER  UNION,  NEW  YORK,  OCTOBER  HTH.  1876.) 


IDOO.  i 


Bead  this  and  hand  it  to  your  neighbor.      Should  yon  r,?e>(!  more,   address,  statin 
«nutity  and  Ko.  of  Document  desired, 

NATIONAL  DEMOCRATIC    C03I3IITTEE, 

Box   3637,    N.  Y. 


THE  REAL  ISSUES  OF  THE  CANVASS. 


Felloio  Citizens  and  Friends  : 

The  Civil  War,  and  the  Constitutional  Amendments  it  ren 
dered  necessary,  closed  a  great  era  in  our  politics — that  which 
grew  out  of  the  existence  of  slavery.  The  distinction  of  that 
era  will  be,  that  it  determined  the  perpetuity  of  the  Union  ;  it 
emancipated  and  enfranchised  the  slaves,  and  it  ordained  that 
the  debts  incurred  in  the  prosecution  of  these  ends  should  be 
for  ever  sacred,  while  the  debts  incurred  in  resisting  them 
should  be  for  ever  invalid. 

This  great  consummation  having  been  accepted  and  approved 
by  all  parties,  the  questions  it  involved  are  taken  out  of  the 
list  of  party  questions,  and  are  become  landmarks  of  history. 
Whether  wisely  or  unwisely  settled,  they  are  settled,  and  the 
nation  passes  on  to  other  issues.  There  would  bo  no  such 
thing  as  progress  in  politics,  ii  we  did  not  admit  what  certain 
English  statesmen  used  to  call  Finality.  If,  when  a  question 
has  been  fully  debated  and  decided  by  the  people,  it  can  not 
be  dismissed,  our  discussions  would  run,  like  mill-horses,  a 
sterile  and  wearisome  round,  leading  in  the  end  to  mere  idiotic 
iteration  and  babble. 

Thus  to  our  war  questions,  other  questions  have  succeeded 
which  may  have  originated  in  the  war,  but  which  no  longer 
pertain  to  the  war.  That  violent  commotion  was  stopped  eleven 
years  .since;  the  structural  dislocations  it  produced  are  re-ad 
justed;  and  our  principal  concern  now  is  not  with  its  causes  or 
its  management,  but  with  its  consequences. 

The  war  left  us  enormous  national  debts,  oppressive  taxa 
tions,  an  inconvertible  currency,  a  lax  and  demoralized  civil 
service,  and  a  vast  impoverished  population,  whose  social 
system  was  revolutionized  from  top  to  bottom.  From  all 
these  sources,  if  ill-managed,  a  deluge  of  evils  threatened  us  ; 
and  the  main  problem  of  statesmanship,  from,  that  time  forth 

955677 


"'  tire  cliief  busiiiesa  of  practical  politics,  was,  by  diminishing 
unnecessary  pressures,  and  strengthening  the  requisite  supports, 
to  divert  the  menacing  tides,  through  easy  and  natural  chan 
nels,  into  the  open  fields,  where  they  would  freshen  and  invig 
orate,  and  not  destroy. 

I. — THE  DUTY  DEVOLVED  ON  THE  PARTY  IN  POWER. 

The  party  in  possession  of  the  government,  at  the  close  of 
the  war  epoch,  was  charged  with  the  conduct  of  this  transi 
tion  from  a  state  of  unsettled,  and  more  or  less  convulsive 
action,  to  a  state  of  regularity  and  order.  It  was  obviously  a  work 
for  intelligent  and  cautious  statesmanship,  and  which  required 
for  its  efficient  execution  a  clear,  consistent  and  definite 
policy.  The  finances  of  a  nation,  embracing  debt,  revenue, 
taxation  and  expenditure, — the  currency  of  a  nation,  on 
which  the  stability  and  success  of  all  its  stupendous  inter 
changes  of  credit  and  commerce  depend, — the  methods  of  the 
civil  service,  whether  they  shall  further,  or  obstruct,  thwart  and 
corrupt  the  general  interests,  the  harmony  of  localities  and 
classes,  the  very  basis  of  prosperous  intercourse  and  social 
order; — these  are  the  weightiest  subjects  of  public  concern, 
and  the  management  of  them,  well  or  ill,  is  the  real  test  of  com 
petency,  whether  in  men  or  parties. 

Now,  the  dominant  party,  which  was  entrusted  with  these 
important  affairs, — has  it  recognized  and  discharged  the  re 
sponsibility  ?  Has  it  seized  the  real  objective  point  of  the 
position,  or  only  misconceived  it  ?  Has  it  met  and  overcome 
the  actual  difficulties,  or  has  it  failed  to  discern  them,  and 
evaded  and  trifled  with  them  ?  That  is  the  question  to  be  de 
termined  by  the  present  canvass  ;  it  is  the  leading,  if  not  the 
sole  issue  ;  and  it  is  to  be  determined,  not  by  appeals  to  out 
worn  passions,  but  by  the  evidences  of  reason  and  the  facts. 

Some  of  these  evidences  I  propose  to  lay  before  you  here ; 
and  if,  in  doing  so,  I  shall  trespass  upon  your  patience,  let  the 
profound  importance  of  the  discussion  be  my  excuse. 

II.— THE  REPUBLICAN  PARTY  HAS  HAD  NO  POLICY. 

Now,  my  first  remark  is,  that  the  Republican  Party  has  had 
no  policy  from  the  beginning.  This  was  not  entirely  its  own 
fault,  for  it  was  originally  a  war  party,  and  war  parties,  from 
their  very  nature  are  apt  to  be  heterogeneous  in  composition, 
and  incoherent  in  aim  and  impulse.  It  was  formed  by 


an  amalgamation  of  several  pre-existing  parties,  on  the  spur 
of  the  moment,  and  to  meet  the  conditions  of  an  exceptional 
crisis.  Outside  the  immediate  issues  of  that  crisis,  its  politi 
cal  convictions  were  diverse  and  inconsistent,  according  to 
the  previous  affinities  of  its  members.  This  inherent  vice, 
this  incongruity  of  constitution,  it  has  never  been  able  to  orer- 
come.  It  has  been  drawn  hither  and  thither  by  discrepant 
and  irreconcilable  tendencies.  It  has  had  no  crystallizing 
idea,  no  dominant  or  organizing  purpose  out  of  which  the  ne 
cessary  practical  measures  could  be  evolved,  and  consequent!/, 
JQO  decisive  or  controlling  policy. 

Unfortunately,  at  the  same  time,  it  put  forward  no  man  to 
amend  or  to  compensate  the  defects  of  its  make  up.  Webster 
said  of  Hamilton,  at  the  close  of  the  Revolution,  that  "  lie 
smote  the  rock  of  the  national  resources,  and  abundant  streams 
of  revenue  gushed  forth  ;  he  touched  the  dead  corpse  of  publio 
credit,  and  it  sprang  upon  its  feet."  But,  at  the  close  of  our 
much  greater  revolution,  no  Hamilton  appeared — no  leading 
mind  capable  of  moulding  events,  or  of  inspiring  a  vast  bodj 
of  men  with  its  own  thought,  and  so  creating  an  epoch.  The  Re 
publicans,  indeed,  were  so  blind,  so  little  sagacious,  so  eager 
for  an  immediate  ascendancy  at  the  expense  of  future  mastery, 
that,  at  a  time  when  peculiarly,  as  the  poet  sings — - 

"  The  soldier's  sword 

Should  sink  its  point  before  the  statist's  pen, 
And  the  calm  head  replace  the  violent  hand. n 

it  selected  for  its  leader  one  who  was  utterly  ignorant  of  ciyio 
duties,  and  utterly  unskilled  in  civic  methods.  He  was  chosen 
because  he  was  a^oldier,  and  not  because  he  was  a  statesman ; 
and  the  party,  when  it  most  required  the  aid  of  high  political 
insight  and  ability,  got  no  aid  in  that  quarter,  but  rather  in 
creased  embarrassments  and  difficulties. 

Thus,  without  definite  political  plans,  and  without  a  com 
petent  head,  the  Republican  party,  as  I  shall  show,  has  been  a 
party  of  mere  promises,  without  performance,  of  fluctuating 
councils  and  impotent  action, — of  expedients  and  shifts,  and 
not  of  principles, — and  therefore  more  intent  on  partisan 
than  patriotic  ends ;  leaving  the  good  Ship  of  State  to  beat 
about  among  the  rocks  and  shoals,  as  the  winds  shifted,  or  the 
currents  sucked. 


HI.— ITS  GROSS  FINANCIAL  FAILURE. 

Its  failure  appears  in  every  department  of  public  affairs  ;  but 
let  us  begin  with  the  finances  : 

(1.)  Mmtfie<;fifaP»M:<>  Debts:  We  emerged  from  the  war 
with  numerous  and  complicated  debts,  incurred  under  adverse 
conditions,  and  at  high  rates  of  interest.     The  first  business  in 
regard  to  them  was  to  consolidate  them  into  a  single  debt, 
at  low  rates,— which  was  practicable,  and  to  fund  the  interest 
saved  into  a  means  of  paying  off  the  principal.      Instead   of 
this,   the    Eepublican    financiers   thought  it  a   fine  thing  to 
begin  paying  off  the  debt  years  before    it    matured.      Their 
orators  and  editors  extolled  it  as  a  grand  success  and  merit. 
It  was  in  my  opinion  a  grand  folly.    It  was,  moreover,  a  breach 
of  law ;  for  Congress,  in  18G9,  had  wisely  enacted  in  the  inter 
est  of  honesty  and  resumption,  that  "  none  of  the  interest  bear 
ing  notes  should  be  redeemed  before  maturity,  unless  the  demand 
notes  or  the  legal  tenders  should  be  convertible  into  coin   at 
par."    Nevertheless,  law  or  no   law,  the  foolish  practice  was 
continued;  the  jubilations   went  on,  until  the    convulsion  of 
1873  opened  the  eyes  of  more  discerning  men,  and  showed  that 
the  vacuum  created  in  the  investment  market  by  the  withdraw 
al  of  government  securities  had  been  speedily  filled  by  railroad 
bonds,  which  enlarged  the  scope  and  aggravated  the  severity, 
if  it  did  not  produce  the  crisis.     All  the  while,  debts  actually 
due  from  day  to  day,  went  to  protest  by  the  millions  ! 

(2.)  Want  of  Economy  and  Extravagance. — It  is  no  time  to 
pay  debts  already  provided  for,  when  your  pockets  are  empty, 
your  trade  stagnant  and  your  labor  idle  ;  but  it  is  a  time  to 
stop  waste,  to  check  extravagance,  and  to  get  rid  of  parasites 
and  bloodsuckers.  Yet  the  administration  scorned  these  sim 
ple  dictates  of  prudence  and  good  sense.  Its  expenditures 
during  its  last  year  are  a  hundred  millions  greater  than  in  the 
first.  In  1868-9  it  spent  $585,133,289;  but  in  1874-5,  $682,- 
000,885.  No  less  in  detail  than  in  the  aggregate  has  its  pro 
fligacy  swollen.  The  civil  list  has  been  increased  ;  the  costs  of 
foreign  intercourse  have  risen  ;  the  pensions  have  grown, 
though  pensioners  ought  to  doorcase ;  the  navy  expenditures 
have  been  enormous,  though  we  have  no  navy  to  show  for  it, 
as  Admiral  Porter  says  ;  (lie  Indian  bureau  expands  while  the 
Indians  are  supposed  every  year  to  be  growing  fewer,  and  the 
mis.  '*  oui<_w«,  where  much  01  the  corrupt  patronage 


•comes  in,  leap  from  twenty-nine  to  nearly  fifty  millions.  Read 
the  last  reports  of  the  secretaries :  not  one  of  them  proposed  a 
.single  specific  retrenchment  of  any  importance.  It  was  all  give, 
give,  give  !  They  asked  an  expenditure  for  this  year  of  twenty- 
five  millions  more  than  last  year,  and  fifty  millions  more  than 
Congress  allowed.  An  actual  burden  of  thirty  millions  was 
taken  off  our  shoulders  by  the  House  of  Representatives,  or 
of  $1*20,000  a  y>  JT  for  each  congressional  district !  When 
everybody  else  was  at  his  wit's  end  to  live,  the  gentlemen  at 
Washington  seem,  to  have  supposed  that  their  offices  were  Big 
Bonanzas,  with  floors  of  silver  and  roofs  of  gold. 

(3.)  Irregular  and  Excessive  Taxation. — Excessive  expendi 
ture,  of  course,  means  oppressive  taxation;  but  our  taxation 
has  been  more  than  onerous.  It  has  been  irregular,  fitful, 
unscientific,  unjust.  Improvised  during  the  war  on  the  rule 
of  the  Irishman  at  Donnybrook,  wherever  you  see  a  head, 
hit  it, — wherever  you  find  anything  to  tax,  tax  it, — it  has 
gone  on  in  tho  same  careless,  hap -hazard  style.  In  other 
nations,  both  customs  and  excises  are  raised  with  some  refer 
ence  to  the  laws  of  political  economy,  as  they  are  taught  by 
science,  or  confirmed  by  long  experience ;  but  here  they  are 
imposed  in  a  way  that  sets  all  principle  at  defiance.  They 
aro  not  laid  on  any  definite  plan,  but  are  simply  fired 
off  at  us  like  a  French  mitrailleuse  which  shoots  a  thousand 
missiles  at  a  time,  that  explode  in  a  thousand  different 
directions.  Tho  tariff  ought  to  be  a  short  schedule  of 
duties,  selected  with  a  view  to  the  largest  returns  at  the 
least  expense,  and  with  the  slightest  interference  with  trade; 
it  is  a  formidable  catalogue  of  exactions, — four  or  five 
thousand  in  kind — chosen  with  no  purpose  of  revenue,  but  to 
the  detriment  of  revenue,  and  solely  for  the  benefit  of  a  few 
favorites.  It  is  a  machine  for  extortion,  which  depletes  the 
many  to  feed  fat  the  few.  Like  the  tourniquet  of  the  elder 
surgeons,  it  arrests  the  circulation  of  one  limb  to  accelerate  that 
of  another;  but  with  this  difference,  that  their  instrument  was 
applied  ia  a  state  of  disease  to  produce  health,  while  this  is 
used  in  health  to  promote  disease.  In  proof,  let  me  ask: 
Where  are  our  clipper  ships, — once  the  admiration  of  the  world 
and  our  pride  ?  Where  our  tonnage,  which  was  once  the  second 
largest  in  the  world,  and  rapidly  advancing  to  be  the  largest? 
Where  the  grand  ocean  steamers  that  once  carried  the  American 
flag  ?  Gone !  taxed  out  of  existence.  And  yet  this  infernal  tariff 


8 

straddling  our  commerce,  as  the  Old  Man  of  the  Sea  straddled 
Sinbadtho  sailor,  remains!  Mr.  David  A.  Wells,  an  eminent 
statist,  was  engaged  to  infuse  some  degree  of  simplicity, 
order,  justice  and  efficiency  into  the  abominable  chaos ;  but  ho 
•was  soon  cashiered.  The  probes  and  correctives  of  science 
•which  he  proposed  to  apply  were  precisely  the  things  the  sys 
tem  needed,  but  precisely  the  things  the  managers  would  not 
have.  With  the  brilliant  example  of  France  before  us,  who, 
at  the  close  of  an  invasion  and  a  civil  war,  discharged  an 
indemnity  half  the  amount  of  our  debt  within  a  few  years  with 
out  deranging  her  industry,  without  depreciating  her  currency, 
•without  convulsion  or  paralysis,  we  have  staggered  along  for 
eleven  years,  and  are,  in  all  respects,  just  where  we  began.  Why 
the  difference  ?  The  French,  in  their  legislation,  have  acted  on 
the  laws  of  science,  but  we  have  preferred  the  nourish  of  the 
Donnybrook  shillelah. 

IV. — CIRCUMLOCUTION  AS  TO  THE  CURRENCY. 

Some  of  this  mischief  is  due  to  sheer  ignorance,  some  of  ifc 
to  selfish  greed ;  but  both  ignorance  and  greed  were 
combined  in  the  shameless  treatment  of  the  currency.  Let  me 
give  you  the  whole  truth  of  the  case  in  a  sentence  which  a 
famous  [Republican  leader  contributed  to  the  Tribune  not  a 
month  since.  "It  was  in  the  power  of  the  administration  and 
"  congress  ten  years  ago,"  wrote  Mr.  Thurlow  Weed,  "  if  they 
"  had  set  themselves  diligently  and  wisely  about  the  task,  to 
"  accomplish  the  resumption  of  specie  payments,  without  de- 
"ranging  or  disturbing,  or  depressing  any  class  or  any 
"  interest ;  but  unhappily  the  statesmanship  the  emergency  de- 
"manded  was  lacking.  The  administration  and  congress  have 
"  only  been  distinguished  as  circumlocutionists.  Their  efforts 
"  thus  far  have  been  in  the  direction  of  how  not  to  do  it." 
That  is  the  truth  ;  but  what  perfidy,  what  dishonor,  what  dis 
grace  it  reflects  upon  the  party  which  clamorously  pretends  to 
be  the  special  friend  and  advocate  of  resumption.  It  was  all 
pretence,  as  I  shall  show  you  by  two  or  three  memorable  in 
stances  : 

(1.)  The  acts  originally  authorizing  the  issue  of  legal  tender 
notes  provided  for  their  conversion  into  six  per  cent,  bonds  • 
and  if  that  provision  had  been  continued,  they  would  never 
have  become  redundant.  The  moment  there  had  been  an  ex 
cess  over  the  regular  wants  of  trade  they  would  have  been 


9 

invested.  But  within  a  year  or  two  of  its  passage  that  provi 
sion  of  the  law  was  repealed  by  the  Eepublican  congress  ;  the 
broad  sluices  of  inflation  were  opened,  and  they  have  ever 
since  been  kept  open.  Mr.  Spaulding,  the  author  of  the  law, 
has  said  within  a  week,  at  Buffalo,  "If  it  had  been  allowed  to 
"  stand  as  it  left  my  hands,  if  the  right  to  fund  the  greenbacks 
"  in  gold  bonds  had  not  been  abrogated,  we  should  have  had 
«  specie  payment  in  1868  "—eight  years  ago ;  "  nothing  under 
"  heaven  could  have  prevented  it.  The  country  would  have 
"  been  forced  into  resumption  in  spite  of  itself."  Why,  then, 
was  not  the  law  allowed  to  stand?  Because  the  leaders  of  the 
party  were  not  in  favor  of  hard  money,  and  the  party  itself  was 
never  decided  enough  to  require  it  of  them.  What  better 
proof  of  this  could  we  have  than  the  fact  that  its  Secretaries 
of  the  Treasury  of  whom  we  may  repeat  what  was  once  said 
of  Brougham  :  "  they  were  men  of  brilliant  incapacity,  vast  and 
"  varied  misinformation,  and  prodigious  moral  requirements ;" 
have  never  scrupled  when  hard  pressed,  to  reissue  the  reserve, 
which  by  law  ought  to  have  been  canceled.  Boutwell  did  it, 
and  snapped  his  fingers  at  the  law.  Eichardson  did  it,  and 
trampled  the  law  under  his  feet. 

(2.)  Again;  in  1869,  Senator  Morton,  who  was  then  a  hard 
money  man  (for  he  has  boxed  the  compass  of  all  opinions), 
proposed  a  bill,  to  accumulate  gold  in  the  treasury,  and,  then 
designate  a  day  on  which  that  gold  should  be  used  for  the 
redemption  of  the  greenbacks.  The  Kepublican  Senate  treated 
his  effort  with  scorn  ;  they  spoke  against  it  and  voted  against 
it ;  and  the  designation  of  a  particular  day  was  ridiculed  and 
denounced  as  the  supremeut  absurdity.  But,  they  offered 
nothing  in  its  place,  and  for  five  years  went  on  debating  pro 
positions  of  which,  Q,sihe  Evening  Post  said,  "it  was  difficult  to 
determine  whether  they  were  the  products  of  stolid  ignorance 
or  heartless  cupidity."  These  debates,  if  such  they  may  be 
called,  reminded  one  always,  of  that  farce  of  Moliere's,  in 
which  a  lady  having  swooned,  the  anxious  father  summons  in 
four  doctors  at  once.  They  straightway  fall  to  wrangling  both 
as  to  the  nature  of  the  attack,  and  as  to  its  remedies,  "  The 
case  is  one  clearly,"  says  the  first,  "of  distemperature  of 
the  blood,  and  requires  the  lancet."  "  Not  at  all,"  interferes 
the  second,  "  the  humours  are  disordered,  and  we  must  purge." 
"  Purge  ?  holy  heaven !"  cries  the  third,  "  the  patient  could 
"  not  live  ten  minutes ;  it  is  an  emetic  she  wants."  "An  emetic!" 


10 

"  horror  of  horrors !"  shouts  the  fourth,  "  'twould  be  instant 
"  death,  and  I  prescribe  an  anodyne."  So  the  State  doctors 
had  each  his  own  theory  of  the  disease,  and  each  his  own 
specific.  But  after  five  years  of  consultation  the  collective 
faculty  of  the  Republican  College  compromised,  concluding 
that  the  best  cure  for  a  plethora  of  p;iper  money  was  more 
money.  Both  the  homcepathic  and  the  allopathic  schools 
were  united  in  their  prescription  ;  for  it  was  homcepathic  in 
principle — like  cures  like — yet  allopathic  in  the  magnitude  of 
the  dose,  which  was  truly  heroic.  In  1874  a  law  was  passed, 
authorizing  an  inflation  of  $100,000000,  which,  President 
Grant,  at  the  last  moment,  and  under  influence  that  have  never 
been  explained,  put  to  death,  greatly  to  the  annoyance  of  his 
principal  supporters  in  Congress. 

(3.)  Then  came  one  of  those  regurgitations  of  opinion,  which 
are  called  tidal  waves,  and  which  threatened  to  change  the 
political  aspect.     The  Republican  leaders  took  fright.     Some 
thing  must  be  done,  they  said  ;  some  tub  must  be  thrown  to  the 
whale  ;  and  a  tub  was  coopered  up  in  caucus,  known  as  the 
Sherman  sham  of  January,  1875.      It  was  nominally  an  act  to 
provide  for  the  resumption  of  specie  payments,  but  really  an  act 
for  the  evasion  of  specie  payments.  In  the  face  of  the  votes  and 
speeches  against  Morton's  bill,  which  had  designated  a  day,  its 
main  feature  was  the  designation  of  a  day  ;  but  unlike  that  ifc 
made  no  provision  of  means.  Go  to!  it  said  "on  the  1st  of  Jan 
uary,  1879,  let  us  build  a  tower  whose  top  shall  reach  to  heaven," 
but  not  a  brick,  nor  a  beam,  nor  a  hodful  of  mortar  was  pre 
pared.     The  tower  was  expected  to  go  up  like  Solomon's  tem 
ple,  "without  hammer  or  axe,  or  the  sound  of  any  tool."     The 
more  candid  of  the  Republican  journals,  like  the  Nation,,  de 
nounced  the  law  as  "  a  cheat."     "  It  is  a  mere  attempt,"  said 
the  critic  "  of  the  Republican  leaders  to  cover  up  their  divi 
sions/' <:  to  produce  an  appearance  of  union  where  no  union 
exists,  and  of  doing  something  where  nothing  is  done."     Carl 
Sclmrz  in  the  Senate  demonstrated  its  hollowness,  and  predicted 
its  inevitable  repeal ;  and  although  ho  voted  for  it,  he  did  so  in 
the  hope  that  the  choice  of  &  certain  day  would  be  construed  as 
' •  ?i  pledge,"   and  would  bind  the  authors  of  it  in  conscience. 
In    conscience !   he  did  not  know  his  colleagues.      It  was  a 
pretext,  a  fetch,  a  buoy  to  keep  them  afloat,  not  a  pledge.  And 
the  proof  of  their  duplicity  is,  that  as  soon  as  the  law  had  an 
swered  their  purposes,  it  was  abandoned.     A  proposition  to  ap- 


11 

prove  it  was  made  at  Cincinnati,  but  instantly  voted  clown.  This 
"  sacred  pledge,"  this  "  obligation  of  national  honor,"  this  test 
and  shibboleth  of  party  orthodoxy,  was  ignominiously  dismissed 
to  the  Limbo  of  Things  not  Wanted  on  Earth.  Yet  in  the  face 
oi  this  ten  years'  prevarication,  the  Republican  leaders  have  the 
audacity  to  declare  "  without  mitigation  or  remorse  of  voice'* 
that  they  alone  are  the  friends  of  resumption.  It  must  be  in 
the  sense  that  the  hotel-keeper  in  Maine  was  in  favor  of  the 
Liquor  Law — i.  c.,  in  favor  of  the  law,  but  opposed  to  its  exe 
cution. 

(4.)  The  Republican  party,  whatever  its  pretensions  may  be, 
has  steadily  defeated  resumption ;  for  with  every  opportunity 
to  bring  it  about,  there  is  yet  no  resumption.  "Will  any  man,  in 
the  least  familiar  with  the  subject,  maintain  that  resumption  is 
possible  without  a  contraction  of  the  outstanding  legal-tenders  ? 
Yet,  I  read  in  the  Tribune  of  the  26th— only  a  few  days  since, 
an  elaborate  demonstration,  based  on  a  careful  array  of  official 
figures,  that  "  the  currency  (issued  by  the  Government)  has 
never  been  as  small  in  volume  as  it  was  in  1867  "  -  nine  years 
ago,  and  "  that  it  has  since  increased  with  every  year."  But  as 
the  Government  currency  is  the  basis  of  the  bank-note  cir 
culation,  there  has  been  a  still  greater  increase  in  that  direc 
tion.  In  1868, — the  year  of  Grant's  election, — the  whole  issue 
of  Legal  Tender  notes,  was  $389,435,058 ;  of  Bank  notes  $299,- 
887,675,  making  a  total  of  $689,322,733  ;  whereas,  in  1375,— 
the  last  year  for  which  WG  have  full  returns,  the  Legal  Tender 
notes  amounted  to  $113,987,581 ;  the  National  Bank  notes  to 
$348,216,902  ;  or  a  grand  total  of  $762,204,483.  The  insrease 
in  seven  years  has  'been  $72,881,750.  How,  in  the  name  of 
logic,  are  we  to  get  to  resumption  while  the  Government  is 
moving  the  other  way  ? 

Y. — DEBASEMENT  or  THE  CIVIL  SERVICE. 

Incompetency  and  double-dealing,  are  exhibited  in  a  still 
more  striking  light  in  respect  to  civil  service  reform.  Two 
great  and  deplorable  evils  have  been  gradually  grafted  on  our 
methods  of  administration  ;  the  one  consisting  in  the  usurpa 
tion  of  tho  executive  function  of  appointment  to  office  by  the 
legislative  branch,  and  the  other,  in  the  practice  of  making  these 
appointments  as  a  reward  of  mere  partisan  servility.  The 
former  evil  was  greatly  aggravated  by  the  law  passed  by  the 
Bepublicans,  which  undertook  to  fetter  the  President's  power 


12 

of  removal,  and  which  created  the  senatorial  conclave  that  has 
since  become  so  dictatorial  and  insolent;  the  latter,  prodigiously 
increased  by  the  circumstances  of  the  war,  has  grown  with  the 
strength  and  patronage  of  the  government,  until,  as  Mr.  Jencks 
of  Rhode  Island,  said  of  it  in  18G7, — "a  more  vicious  system 
does  not  exist  in  any  civilized  nation  on  the  face  of  the  earth." 
It  is  this  system,  which  raises  men  of  no  special  qualifications 
to  office,  who  do  not  discharge  their  duties  at  all,  or  discharge 
them  badly.  Mr.  Curtis  estimated  that  we  lose  $100,000,000 
annually11  by  maladministration.  It  is  this  system  which  greatly 
augments  the  number  and  increases  the  expense  of  the  office 
holders.  During  Grant's  administration  they  have  leaped  from 
64,000  to  94,000.  Holding  their  places  by  an  uncertain  tenure, 
they  are  tempted  to  corrupt  practices  to  swell  their  gains.  The 
defalcations  under  Grant  have  been  over  $5,000,000.  Owing 
their  appointments  to  personal  favor,  not  desert,  they  endeavour 
to  serve  those  by  whom  they  are  appointed,  not  the  public.  They 
are  Conkling's  men,  or  Fenton's  men,  or  Elaine's  men, 
or  Butler's,  and  are  taken  care  of  by  their  patrons.  And 
in  case  of  malfeasance  the  same  influences  which  procured  them 
places  will  endeavour  to  shield  them  from  removal.  No  in 
ducement  to  fidelity  or  vigilance  in  office,  when  fidelity  and 
vigilance  are  not  the  grounds  on  which  they  are  chosen  or 
retained.  On  the  other  hand,  indebted  to  party  services  for 
their  places,  they  combine  to  hide  each  other's  delinquencies 
lest  their  parties  should  suffer  damage  from  exposure,  while  at 
times  of  election  the  entire  corps  is  turned  into  a  babd  of  elec 
tioneering  agents,  who  render  political  controversy,  that 
ought  to  be  a  contest  of  principles,  or  of  rival  policies,  a  violent 
and  bitter  struggle  for  loaves  and  fishes. 

Honorable  and  patriotic  men  of  all  parties  have,  since  1864, 
demanded  the  correction  of  these  abuses.  Bill  after  bill  to 
suppress  them  has  been  presented  arid  defeated  in  Congress. 
At  length,  in  1871,  a  law  was  enacted  in  compliance  with  aa 
overwhelming  popular  sentiment,  authorizing  the  President  to 
prescribe  rules  and  regulations  for  promoting  the  greater  efficacy 
of  tho  civil  service.  He  instituted  a  commission  to  carry  it 
into  effect,  Mr.  G.  W.  Curtis  being  at  the  head.  With  what 
result?  A  loud  proclamation  of  purposes,  followed  by  a 
pompous  par --de,  and  nothing  done.  The  active  politicians  uu 
uding  morton,  Butler,  Cameron  and  Chandler,  laughed 
•fch©  puny  effort  to  scorn.  Mr.  Curtis,  disgusted,  retired 
from  tha  field*  amid  a  gentle  ripple  of  smiles:  his  for- 


13 

lorn  successor,  Mr.  Eaton,  goes  about  bleating  long-winded 
laments  :  and  the  Beform  lias  shared  the  fate  of  those  ancient 
victims,  who  were  decorated  with  ribbons  and  garlands  as 
they  were  led  to  the  sacrificial  altar. 

How  could  it  have  been  otherwise  ?  Why,  the  chief  of  the 
whole  concern,  the  President  himself,  set  the  example  of  treat 
ing  his  patronage  as  a  personal  possession,  which  he  was  at 
liberty  to  dispense,  as  he  pleased,  among  his  relatives  and 
favorites.  It  is  openly  alleged  that  some  of  his  principal  assist 
ants  were  chosen  because  they  had  contributed  money  to  his 
election  or  made  him  presents.  His  kith  and  kin  to  the  third 
and  fourth  remove  were  all  enriched  with  lucrative  sinecures. 
One  or  two  of  them  obtained  roving  commissions  that  enabled 
them  to  levy  tribute  on  contractors  and  applicants  wherever 
they  might  be  found.  His  boon  companions  were  granted  rich 
farmings  of  the  revenues  which  they  exploited,  as  the  French 
say,  as  they  would  have  used  a  plantation  on  lease.  Is  it 
strange  that  subordinates  caught  the  infection,  or  that  takers 
of  toll  stood  in  the  vestibules  of  the  bureaus,  to  sell  their  re 
puted  "  influence  "  over  chiefs  with  whom  they  were,  or  were 
suspected  to  be  in  partnership  ? 

Or,  again,  were  the  congressional  managers  likely  to  sur 
render  a  patronage  on  which  so  much  of  their  own  importance 
and  power  depended  ?  Indeed,  how  were  they  to  set  up  as  reform 
ers  who  themselves  needed  to  be  reformed  ?  Some  of  them  took 
salaries  they  had  not  earned  :  others  accepted  railroad  shares  for 
which  they  had  legislated  :  nearly  all  would  pocket  the  public 
stationery  and  penknives.  Said  Mr.  Hoar,  in  his  impeachment 
speech,  "  I  have  seen  the  chairman  of  the  Committee  on 
Military  Affairs  in  the  House,  rise  in  his  place  and  demand  the 
expulsion  of  four  of  his  associates  for  making  sale  cf  their 
official  privilege  of  selecting  the  youth  to  be  educated  at  our 
great  military  school.  When  the  greatest  railroad  in  the  world, 
binding  together  the  continent  and  uniting  the  two  great  seas 
which  wash  our  shores,  was  finished,  I  have  seen  our  national 
triumph  and  exultation  turned  to  bitterness  and  shame  by  tho 
unanimous  report  of  three  committees  of  Congress,  two  of  the 
House  and  one  of  the  Senate — that  every  step  of  that  mighty 
enterprise  had  been  taken  in  fraud.  I  havo  heard  in  highest 
places  the  shameless  doctrine  avowed  by  men  grown  old  in  public 
office,"  and  who  have  grown  old  in  office,  but  Republicans  ? 
"  that  the  true  way  by  which  power  should  be  gained  in  the  re 
public  is  to  bribe  the  people  with  the  offices  created  for  their 


14 

service,  and  the  true  end  for  which  it  should  be  used  when 
gained  is  the  promotion  of  selfish  ambition  and  the  gratification 
of  personal  revenge." 

VI. — PERVADING  CORRUPTION  OF  THE  DOMINANT  PARTY. 

Could  any  cleanliness  come  of  such  styes  ?  In 
creased  dirt  and  degradation  rather!  Four  years  ago 
already,  Mr.  Stanley  Matthews,  a  high  republican,  de 
clared,  "  Our  party  is  rotten  from  rind  to  core."  Ho 
was  thinking,  doubtless,  of  the  Chorpenning  and  Secor  swindles, 
which  then  looked  monstrous,  though  they  have  since  dwindled 
into  dwarfs,  amid  their  fouler  companions.  Four  years  ago, 
Mr.  Sumner,  one  of  the  founders  of  the  party,  denounced  the 
negotiations  with  St.  Domingo  as  a  venal  and  perfidious  job, 
disguised  under  the  name  of  a  treaty.  Four  years  ago,  Mr. 
Carl  Schurz  described  the  sale  of  arms  to  France  as  a  base 
and  shabby  trick,  which  dishonored  us  in  the  eyes  of  the  civ 
ilized  nations.  Four  years  ago,  Mr.  Jacob  D.  Cox  was 
shouldered  out  of  the  Interior  Department  because  he  would 
not  allow  the  trading  politicians  to  assess  Iris  clerks  and  run 
the  office  as  a  party  machine. 

(1.)  The  revolt  of  1872. — In  short,  four  years  ago,  the  mis 
rule  and  abuses  of  the  administration  had  become  so  flagrant 
that  sensitive,  self-respecting  men  were  compelled  to  abandon 
it.  Messrs.  Adams,  Sumner,  Trumbull,  Schurz,  Cox,  Tipton, 
Greeley ,  and  hundreds  of  thousands  of  others,  combined  for  its 
overthrow,  and,  under  the  name  of  Independent  Republicans, 
sought  an  alliance  with  the  democratic  opposition,  in  order  to 
oust  it  from  power.  What  was  their  complaint  ?  In  an  address 
to  the  people  they  alleged  : 

1st.  That  the  administration  had  openly  trampled  upon  the 
law.  2d.  That  it  had  used  its  public  functions  for  mere  per 
sonal  ends.  3d.  That  it  had  rewarded  the  givers  of  presents 
(or  masked  bribes)  with  honors  and  emoluments.  4th.  That  it 
had  stood  in  the  way  of  the  investigation,  and  prevented  the 
correction  of  abuses.  5th.  That  it  had  kept  alive  the  re 
sentments  of  the  war,  and  instead  of  restoring  the  rights  of 
the  South  had  resorted  to  unconstitutional  means  for  its  op 
pression  ;  and,  6th.  That  the  Republican  party  upheld  and 
justified  these  unscrupulous  acti  of  corruption  and  despotism. 

(2.)  Rapid  and    widespread  demoralization. — This  was  four 


15 

years  ago,  jet  the  party  was  then  an  angel  of  light  com 
pared  with  the  dark  and  siliister  form  it  has  since  assumed. 
It  is  since  then  that  the  Moiety  Contract  farmed  the  collec 
tion  of  certain  revenues  to  a  kennel  of  sleuth-hounds  who 
harried  respectable  merchants  as  they  used  to  harry  fugitive 
negroes  in  the  Southern  swamps,  and  whose  insolences,  extor 
tions  and  robberies  became  so  outrageous  that  the  House  of 
Representatives,  without  a  division,  adopted  the  report  of  the 
Committee  of  "Ways  and  Means,  which  declared  that  "  the 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  the  Assistant  Secretary  and  the 
Solicitor  deserved  severe  condemnation  for  the  manner  in  which 
they  had  permitted  the  law  to  be  enforced."  It  is  since  then  that 
the  federal  army  was  sent  into  an  independent  and  fully  organ 
ized  State  to  uphold  the  ascendancy  of  a  band  of  adventurers 
from  other  States,  who  employed  the  money  of  the  Custom  House 
to  secure  spurious  returns  of  elections,  and  the  bayonets  of  our 
troops  to  overturn  a  government  erected  by  the  people.  It  is 
since  then  that  Mr.  William  M.  Evarts,  Mr.  W.  C.  Bryant,  Mr. 
W.  E.  Dodge,  Peter  Cooper,  Governor  Saloman,  and  other  good 
republicans,  characterised  the  act,  in  a  public  meeting  in  New 
York,  as  "  a  revolutionary  violence,"  as  "  an  usurpation  of  the 
Jaw,"  as  "an  outrage  on  legislative  independence,"  and  as  "a 
teaching  to  persons  receiving  their  first  lessons  in  citizenship, 
that  political  problems  are  to  be  solved  by  arbitrary  processes 
and  displays  of  physical  force."  It  is  since  then  that  a  large  num 
ber  of  prominent  republican  leaders  have  been  convicted  in  public 
opinion  of  having  taken  gifts  of  stock  from  a  great  railroad 
corporation,  on  whose  interests  they  had  legislated  or  might 
be  called  again  to  legislate, — a  Vice-President,  among  others, 
sinking  into  a  remediless  disgrace.  It  is  since  then  that 
a  Speaker  of  the  House  has  shown,  by  his  own  letters, 
that  he  was  a  jobber  in  contracts,  and  the  ally  and  cor 
respondent  of  jobbers,  whose  favors  he  solicited  on  the  ground 
of  his  rulings,  and  whose  stocks  he  peddled  among  his  ad 
herents.  It  is  since  then  that  the  holder  of  an  embassy  to 
an  ancient  and  fastidious  court,  was  rebuked  by  the  House  of 
Representatives  for  lending  his  name  and  his  credit  to  a  mining 
speculation  which  has  taken  its  rank  in  history  as  among  the 
most  prodigious  of  frauds.  It  is  since  then  that  a  vast  con- 
gpiraey  between  the  makers  of  whiskey  and  the  revenue  agents, 
which  defrauded  the  Government  of  hundreds  of  millions  of  dol 
lars  and  elected  and  controlled  members  of  both  Houses  of 
Congress,  has  been  traced  to  tho  higher  departments,  and  even. 


16 

to  the  official  household  of  the  President.  It  is  since  then  that 
the  official  instruments  who  exposed  these  enormous  frauds 
have  been  frozen  out  or  dismissed  from  their  places,  and 
the  atmosphere  which  they  vainly  endeavored  to  cleanse  is 
once  more  made  unpleasant,  not  to  rogues,  but  to  the  prosecu 
tors  of  rogues.  It  is  since  then,  finally,  that  we  have  witnessed 
the  meanest  display  of  venality  known  to  our  annals,  that  of  a 
Secretary  of  War,  who,  as  he  confessed,  shared  in  the  proceeds 
of  extortion  wrung  by  griping  post-traders  from  the  poor 
soldiers  of  the  frontier,  and  who,  when  he  was  impeached, 
allowed  his  counsel  to  defend  "him  on  the  plea  that  the  taking 
of  gifts  by  public  men  was  so  common  that  it  could  not  be  con 
sidered  blameworthy  or  corrupt. 

(3.) — A  Corruption  without  parallel. — I  might  add  to  this 
painful  exhibition  from  the  disclosures  made  by  committees  of 
the  late  Democratic  House  of  Eepresentatives,  but  I  refrain. 
Not  that  I  distrust  the  evidence,  for  I  hold  it  to  be  substanti 
ally  true,  but  lest  it  be  said  that  I  recur  to  partisan  sources. 
It  is,  however,  before  you,  and  you  can  judge  for  yourselves. 
Fraud  rises  upon  fraud,  until,  with  Indian  frauds,  pension 
frauds,  navy  frauds,  printing  frauds,  building  frauds,  contract 
frauds,  post-office  frauds,  custom  house  frauds,  and  frauds 
upon  the  very  grave-stones  of  our  sacred  dead — the  air  grows 
thick  with  malarious  and  suffocating  vapors.  As  we  read  the 
dismal  record,  and  Kings  upon  Kings,  and  Eings  within  Kings, 
are  unfolded  before  us,  we  recall  the  dread  vision  of  the  great 
Italian  poet,  whose  Infernal  Regions  were  composed  of  suc 
cessive  circles  of  scoundrels  and  malefactors,  each  more  dole 
ful  than  the  other,  and  stretching  out  into  ever  widening,  ever 
deepening  gloom. 

(4.)—  These  Crimes  Confessed  by  Republicans.— I  rely,  for 
my  argument,  I  say,  solely  upon  facts  admitted  by  Republicans 
themselves.  I  rely  upon  the  facts  which  induced  Presi 
dent  Woolsey  to  lament  that  "  for  the  past  ten  years  the 
"  country  had  been  growing  politically  worse,  and  that  those 
"  who  had  acted  with  the  dominant  party  had  reason  to  blusk 
"with  sharno  for  its  leaders."  I  rely  upon  the  facts  which 
prompted  Mr.  Carl  Schurz,  in  May  past,  to  exclaim  "that  never 
before,  in  our  history,  has  the  public  mind  been  so  profoundly 
agitated  by  apprehensions  of  danger  arising  from  corrupt 
practices  and  combinations,  and  never  was  there  more  reason 
for  them."  I  rely  upon  the  facts  which  caused  the  liberal  Be- 


17 

publicans  of  this  State,  only  last  year,  to  "  condemn  the  na 
tional  administration  for  its  illegal  and  oppressive  acts,"  and 
"  total  disregard  of  law  and  public  opinion."  I -rely  upon  the 
facts  which  led  the  Union  League  Club,  of  New  York,  to  de 
mand  the  emancipation  of  the  party  from  the  control  of  its 
habitual  managers.  I  rely  upon  the  facts  that  brought  about 
the  organization  of  numerous  societies  for  "  Beform  within  the 
Party,"  which,  though  a  delusive  hope,  was  none  the  less  a  con 
fession  of  deplorable  rottenness.  I  rely  upon  the  facts  which 
forced  presidents  of  colleges,  professors,  clergymen,  editors,  and 
merchants — who,  not  politicians,  represented  the  highest  in 
tellectual  and  moral  worth  of  the  commonwealth — to  assemble  in 
conference  at  the  Fifth  Avenue  Hotel,  and  to  consult  as  to  what 
could  be  done  to  arrest  the  almost  universal  political  decay.  I 
rely  upon  the  facts  which  impelled  them  to  proclaim  their  de 
termination  not  to  support  any  presidential  candidate  connected 
with  or  conniving  at  corruption,  and  who  was  not  in  character 
and  by  record,  capable  of  striking  down  "  the  enormous  abuses 
intrenched  behind  established  custom." 

VI. — THE  EFFORT  TO  DISGUISE  AND  EVADE  EESPONSIBILITY. 

"  But,"  say  a  class  of  meek-eyed  Republicans,  adopting  the 
phrase  of  Moliere's  mock-doctor,  when  some  one  insisted,  con 
trary  to  his  saying,  that  the  heart  was  on  the  left  side  of  the 
body,  nous  avons  change  tout  cela,  we  have  changed  all  that! 
What  you  describe,  they  say,  what  all  these  indignant  classes 
protest  against,  is  Grantism — not  Republicanism  !  Alas  !  the 
distinction,  is  like  that  of  the  bishop  who  had  fallen  into 
the  vice  of  profane  swearing,  and  who  excused  himself  for 
the  fault  on  the  ground  that  he  swore  as  a  man  and  not  as  a 
bishop.  "  But  when  the  man  is  damned  for  it,"  asked  a  by 
stander,  "  what  will  become  of  the  bishop?"  What  will  be 
come  of  Republicanism,  when  Grantism  goes  below  ?  I  am  not 
at  all  surprised  at  the  desire  to  get  rid  of  the  connection. 
Nobody  likes  to  go  about  with  an  ill-smelling  companion— a 
dead  dog,  or  a  consumer  of  garlic.  Nevertheless  everybody  ought 
to  be  held  to  the  consequences  of  his  acts.  Party  government 
means  that  parties,  not  persons,  are  the  responsible  instruments 
of  power.  No  doubt  it  would  be  convenient  to  make  a  scape 
goat  of  Grant,  and,  after  putticg  the  sins  of  a  whole  community 
of  rascals  on  his  shoulders,  send  him  into  the  wilderness.  But 
that  vicarious  ceremony  would  not  change  the  real  state  of  tho 
facts.  Grant  has  been  the  incarnation  of  his  party. 


18 

(1.)—  Grant  never  Renounced,  but  always  Approved. — Has 
he  ever  been  renounced?  If  so,  when  and  where?  A  few 
bold  speakers  and  writers,  now  and  then,  have  dared  to 
criticise  his  management,  but  they  were  at  once  excommuni 
cated,  like  Suinner,  Schurz,  Trumbull  and  others.  The  mass 
of  the  party  has  clung  to  him.  It  was  only  a  year  or  twe  since 
it  was  doubtful  whether  he  would  not  be  proposed  for  a  third 
term.  His  friends  say  still  that  he  would  poll  more  Republi 
can  votes  than  any  man  named  as  a  candidate  at  Cincinnati. 
Certainly  the  party,  when  acting  as  a  party,  has  never  lost  an 
occasion  for  approving  his  management.  State  conventions 
are  commonly  considered  the  exponents  of  party  sentiment  t 
Well,  how  has  it  been  with  them  ?  I  have  taken  pains  to  con 
sult  the  records  for  the  past  year,  and  I  find  that  not  a  single 
one  of  them  ventured  to  breathe  a  word  of  reproach. 

(a.) — By  the  State  Conventions. — From  Maine  to  Oregon  ex 
pressions  of  approval  followed  each  other  like  a  fan  dejoie  of 
musketry.  Massachusetts  said,  "the  President  is  entitled  to 
our  gratitude  for  his  independence,  courage  and  good  sense.** 
Kentucky  professed  "unabated  confidence  in  his  devotion 
to  Republican  principles."  Connecticut  repeated  its  "  undi- 
minished  confidence  in  his  integrity  and  patriotism;"  and 
Ohio  was  sure  that  "  he  is  an  able  and  judicious  statesman, 
entitled  to  our  gratitude."  Iowa,  Minnesota,  Mississippi, 
Arkansas  all  avowed  "  a  hearty  approval,"  while  far  California 
"  joined  her  political  brethren  of  the  Union  in  their  cordial  and 
earnest  support  of  the  administration."  But  Pennsylvania 
capped  the  climax,  proclaiming  "the  achievements  of  the  ad 
ministration  the  most  brilliant  in  our  annals."  Well ;  they 
are  the  most  brilliant,  but  the  brilliancy  was  that  which  came 
from  putrescence  ! 

(&.) — By  the  National  Convention. — When  the  National  Con 
vention  assembled  at  Cincinnati,  only  three  months  since, 
this  chorus  of  peans  ngain  assaulted  the  patient  heavens. 
All  the  leading  men  of  the  party  were  there;  and  was 
anything  said,  either  in  the  speeches  or  resolutions,  to  dispar 
age  Grantism  ?  Was  it  proposed,  even  by  implication  to  dis 
card  its  spirit  and  its  methods  ?  Did  any  one  so  much  as 
hint  as  to  the  necessity  or  tho  propriety  of  great  and  search 
ing  reforms?  Was  reform  mentioned  at  all?  Not  a  word! 
The  administration  was  again  Braised  to  the  top  of  the  gamut. 
Eor  all  that  was  said,  Babcock  was  an  unborn  babe  of  innocence, 


19 

and  Belknap's  ghost,  which  must  have  stalked  among  them, 
stalked  nnrebukecl.  It  was  conceded,  it  is  true,  that  the  pub 
lic  conscience  was  somewhat  aroused,  and  that  if  malfeasance 
and  crime  should,  perchance,  be  discovered,  they  ought  to 
be  punished,  but  as  to  the  streams  of  feculence  which,  had 
poured  for  the  last  ten  years  through  all  the  public  orifices 
they  were  as  dumb  as  driven  cattle.  The  cry  for  reform,  that 
has  been  gathering  strength  from  day  to  day,  and  from  hour  to 
hour,  until  it  had  almost  swollen  to  the  might  and  majesty  of  a 
tempest,  beat  and  roared  around  the  edifice  where  the  col 
lective  wisdom  of  Eepublicanism  was  assembled  but  in  vain ; 
its  pleading  voices  were  drowned  in  the  howl  of  the  placemen 
over  their  endangered  provender.  What !  reform  in  a  conven 
tion,  where  a  man  fearfully  shattered  by  his  own  letters,  came 
within  twenty-five  votes  of  the  Presidential  nomination,  while 
the  man  who  had  earnestly  labored  to  put  down  corruption 
received  no  more  than  126  out  of  a  total  of  756  votes  ! 

(2.) — The  same  Managers  and  the  same  Machinery  employed. — 
Grantism  discarded !  Look  you  ;  the  most  devoted  henchmen  of 
the  administration — the  notorious  Senatorial  Ring  which  has 
defended  its  every  act — are  still  the  leading  managers! 
Cameron,  Conkling,  Morton,  Logan,  to  whom  Blame  has 
recently  been  added,  are  the  Ajax  Telernons  of  this  cam 
paign.  Chandler,  Grant's  Secretary  of  the  Interior,  a 
weather-beaten  trickster,  who  has  come  down  to  us  from 
former  generations,  is  the  chosen  center  of  the  machine,  and 
turns  the  crank.  Every  placeman,  from  the  highest  bureaucrat 
to  the  lowest  tide-waiter,  has  joined  the  hunt,  and  "  harks 
forward "  the  pack,  which,  according  to  the  Bepublican  re 
formers,  must  turn  him  out  of  his  hole?  Would  every 
scoundrel  from  Coif  ax  to  Schenck,  every  suspected  pilferer 
whom  the  late  inquiries  have  branded,  fling  up  his  cap  for  the 
regeneration  of  a  party,  which,  if  regenerated,  must  forever  ex 
clude  him  from  its  embrace  ?  Would  the  whole  "  bread  and 
butter  brigade  "  of  office  holders  turn  out  as  "Boys  in  Blue," 
— though  some  of  them  were  infants  in  arms,  not  soldiers  in 
arms, — during  the  war — if  they  expected  the  besom  of 
reform  to  sweep  their  ranks  ?  The  mere  supposition-  is  absurd. 
In  ancient  times,  when  a  man  got  possessed  of  the  devil,  they 
cast  the  devil  out ;  but  now  the  practice  is  to  get  rid  of  the 
evil  spirit  by  keeping  him  in  !  Is  it  reform  to  employ  the 
very  men  who  have  debauched  and  debased  a  party  to  plead 


20 

its  cause  before  the  people  ?  Is  it  reform  to  go  about  making 
speeches  which  touch  upon  every  other  topic  but  reform  ? 
Bead  the  campaign  orators  !  Their  whole  talk  is  a  war  whoap  ! 
They  go  back  sixteen  years  to  dig  up  issues  from  the  decay  of 
the  grave  ;  they  go  forward  indefinitely  into  the  future  to  invent 
issues,  like  the  "  rebel  claims  "  which  are  conjectural  and  pre 
posterous  ;  bat  existing  abuses  they  avoid,  as  the  proverb  says, 
the  devil  does  holy  water.  The  only  abuse  they  handle  is  the 
abuse  of  personal  character,  in  which  they  display  a  prodi 
gality  of  resource  that  might  fill  all  Billingsgate  with  envy. 

(3.) —  The  Republican  Reformers  Impotent.— There  is  no  doubt 
a  small  but  highly  respectable  minority  of  the  Republicans,  the 
"better  element"  it  is  called  (though  Mr.  Conkling  lately  said 
they  were  "  only  theorists  or  critics,  or  professional  reformers, 
or  vainglorious  pretenders  to  supreme  wisdom"),  which  really 
desires  to  wash  away  the  sins  of  the  party,  which  believes  in 
reform  within  the  party,  and  has  labored  diligently  to  that 
end.  All  honor  to  its  efforts  !  But  thus  far,  I  say,  its  mem 
bers  have  fought  a  losing  fight.  They  were  twice  defeated 
in  this  State ;  they  have  been  defeated  in  every  other  State 
where  they  have  tried  it  on,  save  one ;  and  they  were  defeated 
in  the  National  Convention,  when  they  were  compelled  to  ac 
cept  a  candidate  who  was  not  their  choice.  They  took  him,  not  be 
cause  he  was  the  man  they  wanted,  but  because  they  supposed  he 
might  turn  out  better  than  others  whom  they  did  not  want. 
They  achieved  no  triumph  of  principle ;  they  simply  submitted 
to  a  party  stratagem.  I  doubt,  in  fact,  whether  the  reform 
of  a  party  which  has  fallen  into  bad  ways  because  of  its  long 
possession  of  power  be  morally  possible  from  within.  History 
would  seem  to  demonstrate  that  in  all  ages,  or  in  ninety-nine 
cases  out  of  a  hundred,  reformers  are  compelled  to  be  come- 
outers.  They  must  abandon  the  organization,  which  they  desire 
to  purify,  if  they  would  make  their  blows  effective.  Within  it 
they  are  crushed  by  its  force,  or  defeated  by  its  cunning ;  and 
the  same  influences,  the  same  temptations,  which  have  caused 
its  degeneracy  will  baffle  their  effort s.  It  will  go  on  festering 
in  its  iniquity.  It  will  go  on  deteriorating  till  adversity  over 
takes  it,  and  shakes  it  out  of  its  routine,  and  drives  away  the 
ill-omened  birds  who  have  fouled  it  with  their  droppings. 
In  this  view,  Mr.  Schurz,  in  1872,  contended  that  the  Kepnb- 
lican  party  was  so  pervaded  and  subjugated  by  the  spirit  of 
corruption  that  the  reformation  of  it  was  not  be  to  expected.. 


21 

*'A  political  party,"  he  said,  "which  fails  to  recognize, 
"  abuses,  as  such,  has  lost  the  moral  ability  to  correct  them. 
"  Its  very  ascendancy  will  thenceforward  stand  in  the  way  of 
"  reform.  And  thus  it  is  that  the 

"  great  name,  the  great  authority  of  the  Republican  party 
"  is  being  used  this  very  moment  to  uphold  the  most  atrocious 
"  system  of  government  which  this  country  ever  saw.  A 
"  party  which  cannot  live  and  prosper  unless  it  be  supported 
"  by  corruption  ;  a  party  that  cannot  prosper  unless  it  be  sup- 
"  ported  by  a  revival  of  the  old  war  feeling,  and  by  tearing 
"  open  again  the  wounds  from  which  the  people  of  the  United 
"  States  have  bled  so  long  ;  such  a  party,  when  it  has  come  to 
"  that,  does  not  deserve  to  live." 

VII. — ME.  HAYES  is  ONLY  A  MAKESHIFT. 
Mr.  Hayes,  the  new  leader,  whom  all  the  factions  unite  in  sup 
porting,  may  or  may  not  be  the  Hercules,  destined  to  cleanse 
their  Augean  stable — who  can  tell?  He  is  quite  unknown, 
and  the  auguries  are  not  favorable.  He  was  not,  in  the  first 
place,  chosen  in  the  way  that  reformers  are  commonly  chosen, 
i.  e.9  because  of  their  prominence  as  reformers.  His  name  had 
never  been,  in  the  slightest  degree,  identified  with  the  move 
ment  for  the  amelioration  of  Republican  politics.  All  through 
the  outbreak  and  revolt  of  the  "better  element"  which  is 
spoken  of,  he  never  so  much  as  whimpered.  During  the  whole 
misuse  of  power,  which  the  reformers  complain  of,  not  a  word 
of  dissatisfaction,  not  even  a  lisp  of  criticism,  escaped  his  lips. 

(1) — The  Mode  of  his  Selection. — Neither  inside  nor  outside 
the  nominating  convention  was  he  spoken  of  as  the  repre 
sentative  or  the  ally  of  those  who  desired  a  change.  Those 
who  were  on  the  outside,  in  a  public  address,  had  ex 
pressly  excluded  men  of  his  calibre  from  their  lists  of 
possible  choice ;  those  on  the  inside  had  previously  de 
scribed  and  deprecated  the  very  course  of  proceeding  by  which 
he  was  selected.  Mr.  Curtis,  a  leader  of  the  latter  sort,  had 
(in  Harper's  Weekly),  some  weeks  before  the  convention,  di 
rected  attention  to  the  peculiar  mode  in  which  the  Pennsyl 
vania  delegation  was  constituted  ;  it  was  pledged  to  vote  as  a 
unit  for  Hartrarift,  who  had  no  chance,  and  that  meant,  he 
said,  that  they  should  keep  Hartranft  as  a  dummy  in  the  fore 
ground,  until  the  time  should  arrive  for  springing  another,  but 
no  less  serviceable  name.  l\Tow  the  very  procedure  which  Mr. 
Curtis  predicted  and  feared  was  the  procedure  which  the  dele- 


22 

gation  followed.  Hartranft  was  voted  for  till  the  opportune 
moment  came,  when  ho  was  thrust  into  the  bag,  and  Mr.  Hajes 
was  pulled  out  of  it.  At  once  all  tho  trading  members  rushed 
to  the  rescue.  They  all  gave  cry,  as  young  dogs  at  fault  when 
the}7  hear  the  yelp  of  some  older  hound.  Strange  to  say,  tho 
reformers  joined  in,  and  with  Cameron  on  the  lead, — Cameron, 
a  name  identified  with  the  dirtiest  tricks  of  politics  in  tho  dirtiest 
of  the  gangs — yelped  as  loudly  as  the  others.  It  may  be  possible, 
as  a  wit  has  said,  that  by  setting  a  fresh  hen  on  a  nest  of  rotten 
eggs,  you  are  going  to  hatch  out  a  fine  brood  of  chickens,  but 
that  is  not  the  way  of  nature. 

(2.)  Mr.  Hayes's  Serviceable  Qualities. — Mr.  Hayes  is  only 
a  new  hen ;  the  nest  is  the  same,  and  the  eggs  are  the 
same.  I  shall,  however,  say  nothing  against  Mr.  Hayes,  for 
the  reason  that  some  one  gave  for  not  righting  a  duel  with 
the  lank  John  Randolph — there  was  not  enough  of  him  to 
shoot.  I  have  just  read  his  biography,  put  forth  by  admiring 
friends,  and  I  find  it  a  labored  canonization  of  the  merest  me 
diocrity.  He  had  the  merit  some  years  ago,  common  to  about 
five  hundred  thousand  of  our  fellow  citizens,  of  serving  honor 
ably  in  the  war  ;  but  he  served  with  no  particular  distinction. 
He  was  four  years  in  Congress,  where  his  name  was  heard  only 
when  the  clerk  called  the  roll.  No  measure  of  his  devising 
is  now  remembered  ;  not  a  speech  even  remains  ;  not  so  much 
as  a  report  on  any  subject,  save  a  resolution  wrhich  he  got  in  from 
the  most  insignificant  of  committees,  that  on  the  Library.  It 
was  a  proposal  to  give  away  a  considerable  number  of  books 
to  the  members  themselves,  which  Elihu  Washburne  snubbed 
by  the  remark  that  if  they  wanted  the  property  of  the  people 
they  ought  to  pay  for  it,  and  not  endeavor  to  pocket  it  by  a 
sneaking  appropriation  !  Hayes  simply  voted  with  his  party, 
which  means  that  he  voted  for  all  the  gigantic  subsidies  to  the 
Pacific  Railroads,  for  many  bad  jobs,  and  for  the  several  meas 
ures  which  looked  to  an  inflation  of  the  currency.  Mr.  Hayes  has 
also  been  a  Governor  of  Ohio  for  several  years ;  it  is  a  clerical 
office,  calling  for  the  exercise  of  no  marked  ability,  but,  such 
as  it  is,  his  management  of  it  does  not  seem  to  have 
been  resplendent.  The  Boston  Daily  Advertiser,  a  Repub 
lican  sheet,  describing  his  career,  said :  "  He  has  been 
"  Governor  for  two  terms,  but  there  never  was  any  danger  that 
"  he  would  institute  any  reform  to  hurt.  He  is  a  man  of  fair 
"  ability,  good-natured,  correct  in  his  personal  habits,  honest^ 


23 

"  sound  in  the  Republican  faith,  but  of  no  force  or  independ- 
"  ence."  That,  I  suspect,  is  a  correct  description  ;  it  is  what 
those  who  know  him  in  his  own  State  have  written  me,  and  it 
was  the  opinion  of  Mr.  Carl  Schurz  expressed  to  me  not  long 
ago.  Mr.  Hayes  never  has  been  a  leader  in  the  true  sense  of 
the  term.  Ho  always  has  been  a  follower,  and  very  likely  al 
ways  will  be. 

(3.)  Poor  Material  for  a  Reformer. — Now,  you  will  confess 
that  this  is  poor  timber  for  a  reforming  Hercules.  Certainly, 
it  is  not  what  the  Fifth  avenue  conference  demanded,  when, 
in  terms  which  they  again  and  again  emphasized,  they  asked 
for  a  candidate  who  should  be  something  more  than  "  an  avail 
ability  ;"  a  candidate  who  was  uot  to  bo  trusted  merely  "  on  the 
"  strength  of  private  recommendations,"  or  upon  "  supposed 
virtue  and  rumored  ability."  They  demanded  "  a  candidate 
"  who  might  be  depended  upon  to  possess  the  moral  courage 
"  and  sturdy  resolution  to  grapple  with  abuses  that  have  ac- 
"  quired  the  strength  of  established  custom."  These  very 
words  were  written  and  uttered,  as  I  know,  to  prevent  the 
candidacy  which  some  of  their  writers  and  utterers  now  pro 
fess  to  regard  as  satisfactory.  Politics,  like  time,  has  its 
whirligigs,  and  no  gyratory  display  will,  in  the  end,  prove  more 
remarkable  than  that  which  loudly  clamored  for  a  reform,  and 
quietly  accepted  a  succession. 

VI. — THE  ATTITUDE  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  REFOEMEES. 

Thus  far  you  have  seen  the  shortcomings,  the  blunders,  the 
deceits  and  the  rascalities  of  the  ruling  party  ;  you  have  seen 
the  depth  and  extent  of  its  official  degradation  as  depicted  by 
its  own  members ;  but  you  will  ask  whether  the  Democratic 
reformers  are  likely  to  do  any  better  ?  That  is  a  pertinent  and 
a  decisive  question,  and  I  am  going  to  answer  it  frankly.  But 
before  answering  it,  permit  me  to  make  two  preliminary  ob 
servations.  The  first  is,  that  if  there  is  to  bo  any  change 
at  all  in  the  political  situation,  it  must  be  through  the  only 
organized  political  force  capable  of  the  task  ;  that  is  the 
Democratic  party.  The  Republican  party,  will  not,  as  we 
assume,  cleanse  itself  ;  a  third  party  is  impracticable,  and  there 
fore,  unless  you  are  willing  to  grant  an  eternal  lease,  an 
eternal  monopoly,  to  tho  party  in  possession,  you  must  make 
use  of  the  only  remaining  weapon  of  resistance.  In  the  second 
place,  that  part  of  tho  republican  party  which  calls  itself 


24 

Xiiberal  cannot  object  to  a  co-operation  with  the  Democratic 
party.  It  cannot,  because  it  is  estopped  by  its  own  example. 
In  1872  its  journals,  with  the  Tribune  at  their  head,  teemed  with 
appeals  to  the  people  to  take  that  party  to  their  embraces, 
Its  most;  distinguished  leader,  Mr.  Greeley,  traversed  the  land 
commending  it,  in  speeches  of  remarkable  power,  to  general 
confidence.  Mr.  Carl  Schurz  went  so  far  as  to  say  that  its 
willingness  to  ally  itself  with  the  Independents,  in  spite  of  its 
dislike  for  Mr.  Greeley,  atoned  for  all  its  past  misconduct, 
and  evinced  a  nobleness  of  self-surrender  that  was  itself  a 
pledge  of  its  future  virtue.  In  a  word,  the  liberal  revolters  be 
sought  it  alliance,  and  were  willing  and  eager  to  trust  it  with  all 
the  responsibilities  of  power.  Were  these  gentlemen  sincere 
then?  what  was  the  ground  of  their  faith?  Are  they  sincere 
now?  what  is  the  ground  of  their  distrust?  There  was  then,  or 
there  is  now,  some  prevarication,  and  I  leave  them  to  choose 
the  horn  of  the  dilemma  on  which  they  wish  to  be  impaled. 
Certainly,  the  Democratic  party  has  not  degenerated  in  the 
interval ;  but,  on  the  contrary,  as  I  am  about  to  show,  it  has 
greatly  improved. 

(I.)  The  Democratic  Declaration  of  Principles. — Its  remarkable 
declaration  of  principles,  made  at  St.  Louis — the  most  pene 
trating,  clear  and  comprehensive  creed  yet  uttered  by  any  of 
our  political  parties — shows  that  it  has  a  thorough  conception 
of  the  existing  evils,  and  of  the  remedies  by  which  they  are  to  be 
reached.  Accepting  in  unreserved  and  emphatic-  terms  the  con 
stitutional  and  social  changes  wrought  by  the  war,  it  proposes 
as  the  basis  of  all  future  legislation,  both  State  and  national, 
the  perfect  equality  of  citizens  before  the  law.  It  denounces 
as  an  invasion  of  this  fundamental  tenet  those  paternal  and 
fostering  theories  of  the  functions  of  government,  which  have 
always  been  the  fruitful  sources  of  injustice  and  tyranny. 
In  this  condemnation  it  includes  that  spirit  of  petty  interfer 
ence  with  the  concerns  of  society,  which  ultimates  in  sump 
tuary  and  inquisitorial  legislation,  whose  peculiar  sphere  is 
the  kneading  trough  and  the  bed-chamber.  In  a  word,  it  re 
turns  to  those  grand  principles  of  human  rights  and  human 
freedom  which  identify  Democracy  with  Christianity,  and,  on 
the  strength  of  these,  it  demands  a  searching,  smiting,  unspar 
ing  reformation  of  specified  abuses, — in  finance,  in  taxa 
tion,  in  currency,  and  the  civil  service.  Every  word  is  full  of 
meaning,  and  breathes  alone  of  amelioration  and  progress. 


25 

It  seems  to  me  impossible  for  any  ear  to  mistake  their  ring  of 
sound  and  sonorous  metal.  The  great  aims  on  which  we  re 
formers  of  old  date  have  fixed  our  eyes — decentralization,  hard 
money,  free  trade,  impartial  legislation,  are  here  made  the 
rallying  cry  of  a  vast  and  powerful  body  of  men,  and  for  us  to 
reject  the  overture  would  be  as  foolish  as  it  would  be  for  the 
General  of  a  forlorn  hope  to  turn  away  a  mighty  reinforcement, 
and  go  over  to  the  foe  on  the  very  eve  of  victory. 

(2.) — Sincerity  of  its  Purposes. — It  will  be  said,  I  am  aware, 
that  the  Democrats  are  not  sincere  in  this  avowal  of  their 
faith ;  and  some  of  them  are  not ;  for  parties,  like  drag  nets, 
catch  up  many  queer  fish ;  but  I  find  it  impossible  to  believe 
that  a  body  embracing  one-half  the  people  of  the  United  States, 
at  least,  is  insincere.  As  for  the  authors  of  that  platform,  I 
know  them  to  be  terribly  in  earnest.  Of  the  Democratic  Party 
itself,  it  should  be  remembered,  that  separated  for  years  from 
official  responsibility,  it  has  been  an  inchoate  and  desultory  op 
position  rather  than  a  compact  organization.  It  has  suffered  the 
fate  of  most  oppositions  ;  nearly  all  the  unswept  rubbish  of  dis 
content  has  been  shot  into  its  bosom  ;  nearly  all  the  extravagance 
and  vagary  that  accredited  authorities  musf?  repulse  has  assumed 
its  name,  while  its  own  impatience  of  misrule  has  fermented 
into  sour  eructations,  or  caused  it  to  fling  out  before  and  be 
hind  in  a  wild  wray  that  has  often  damaged  itself  more  than  its 
enemy.  It  has,  however,  none  the  less  profited  by  its  own 
follies  and  mistakes,  and  I  look  upon  its  remarkable  action  at 
St.  Louis  as  a  most  hopeful  recovery  from  its  past  errors.  I 
see  its  earlier  and  better  traditions — forgotten  for  a  time  in  the 
giddy  whirl  of  a  tempest, — there  revived  ;  I  recognize  there  its 
old  instinct  of  justice,  its  old  popular  sympathy,  its  old  aspira 
tion  for  freedom  and  progress,  and  I  believe  that  now — re 
cruited  by  many  of  the  soundest  heads  and  noblest  hearts  of 
the  other  camp,  by  Adamses,  Trumbulls,  Palmers,  Curtins, 
Blairs,  Hoadleys,  Welleses  and  Bartletts.  who  have  been  driven 
forth  by  its  corruptions — and,  infused  with  the  fresh,  ardent, 
uncontaminated  blood  of  the  young  men,  such  as  I  have  be 
fore  me — it  is  destined  to  resume  the  vigor  and  splendor  of  its 
prime. 

(3.) — The  Democratic  Candidate. — Its  choice  of  a  leader  rein 
forces  this  faith  and  confirms  this  confidence.  Mr.  Tiklen  is, 
of  all  men  living,  one  of  the  best  fitted  to  the  position  and  the 
times.  We  of  this  city,  at  least,  know  who  and  what  he  is. 


26 

He  has  gone  in  and  out  before  us  for  forty  years,  and  our  eyes 
are  our  witnesses.  He  has  gone  in  and  oufc  before  us,  as  the 
respected  private  citizen,  as  the  eminent  lawyer,  as  the  adroit 
but  upright  politician,  as  the  reformer  whose  brows  are  gashed 
with  tokens  of  old  wars,  yet  wreathed  with  the  laurels  of  as 
many  victories,  and  as  the  experienced  statesman,  whose  work, 
as  far  back  as  ISiG,  had  been  incorporated  into  our  constitution 
and  our  history. 

(a.) — Partisan  misrepresentations. — Yet,  singular  to  say,  a  ran 
corous  partisan  press,  which  combines  the  manners  of  the  bravo 
with  those  of  the  fishwife,  has  declared  that  we  are  mistaken  in 
these  experiences  of  forty  years,  and  that  Mr.  Tildeii  is  not 
only  not  what  he  pretends  to  be,  or  whal  we  believe  him  to  be 
but  something  far  different.  It  has  found  as  many  bad  names 
for  him  as  Coleridge  found  oi  bad  smells  in  Cologne. 
He  is  a  drunkard,  a  liar,  a  cheat  a  counterfeiter,  a  per 
jurer  and  a  swindler, — whose  pretensions  as  a  reformer 
are  put  on  only  to  hide  his  companionship  with  thieves ; 
and  whose  fortune  has  been  won,  not  by  the  honorable 
use  of  a  rare  and  exceptional  talent,  but  in  low  intrigue 
and  fraudulent  devices.  The  dirty  hounds!  If  what  they  yelp 
at  his  heels  were  true  ho  would  still  be  purer  than  many  in 
power  at  Washington,  but,  none  the  less,  he  ought  to  be  in 
Sing  Sing,  not,  the  Governor  of  the  largest  state  of  the  Union. 

But,  unhappily  for  their  authors,  these  are  bald,  atrocious, 
unpardonable  falsehoods ;  the  spawn  of  reckless  brains  and 
malignant  hearts.  I  sometimes  shudder  at  the  dark  fog-bank 
of  calumny  which  an  electioneering  heat  engenders;  and  yet  I 
cannot  think  that  the  pupil  and  friend  of  Silas  Wright,  Michael 
Hoffman  and  Azariah  Flagg, — New  York's  traditional  syno- 
nymns  for  public  probity, — that  the  friend  and  companion  of 
Cutting,  Kent,  Sedgwick,  Bryant,  O'Conor  and  Robinson  ;  that 
the  leader  whom  forty  thousand  Democrats  of  this  city  fol 
lowed  in  his  relentless  charge  upon  the  banditti  of  the  City 
Hall,  whom  the  people  of  the  State,  for  that  service,  chose 
their  Governor  by  a  majority  of  fifty-four  thousand  over  the 
once  amiable  but  now  gory-minded  General  Dix ;  whom  his 
very  opponents  lately  delighted  to  praise  ;  I  say  I  have  greatly 
mistaken  the  character  of  the  American  people  if  such  a  man 
with  such  a  career,  is  to  be  injured  by  whole  simooms  of  slan 
der,  however  foul  or  violent. 

(fij — Confessions  of  his  opporients. — The  very  fabricators  of 


27 

these  libels  wero  Mr.  Tilden's  eulogists  not  two  years  since. 
He  is,  said  the  Times,  "  a  high-toned  Democrat,"  "  a  man  of  un- 
snlliecl  honor,  public  and  private,"  "a  gallant,  conscientious, 
efficient  foe  to  corruption  ;"  "of  an  honesty  beyond  all  ques 
tion,"  and  "deserving  the  greatest  credit  for  the  good  work  he 
has  done  and  the  evil  work  he  has  frustrated."  Need  I  add  the 
testimony  of  the  Tribune.,  the  Evening  Post,  the  Nation,  and 
Harper's  Weekly?  Take  one  only — the  last.  You  all  know 
and  admire  my  accomplished  friend,  Mr.  G.  W.  Curtis — too 
much  of  a  partisan,  perhaps,  but  a  gentleman  and  a  scholar, 
What  said  he  hardly  a  year  ago  ?  "  In  opposing  his  election 
"  (for  Governor)  we  were  careful  never  to  question  his  ability, 
"  or  his  integrity.  When  he  took  hold  of  the  Reform  movement 
"  against  Tweed,  he  did  so  with  a  vigor,  a  tenacity  an.d  a  SUCCESS 
"  that  every  good  citizen  could  most  sincerely  commend.  Tilden  is 
"  a  man  of  great  political  experience  and  sagacity.  He  knew 
"  that  in  his  efforts  he  had  necessarily  alarmed  the  immense 
"  venal  element  of  his  party,  and  that  he  must  count  upon 
"  its  constant  and  relentless  hostility.  No  man  knew  better 
"  than  he  the  power,  the  secresy,  the  resources  and  the  methods 
"  of  that  conspiracy  for  plunder  and  fraud  known  as  the  Ring. 
"  Happily  his  instincts  and  his  experience  assured  him  that 
"  the  people  are  not  corrupt,  and  that  a  bold,  radical  and 
"  thoroughly  intelligent  assault  upon  entrenched  and  enormous 
"  abuses  is  sure  of  public  sympathy  and  support."  "In  the 
"  course  that  Governor  Tilden  has  taken  in  defying,  exposing 
"  and  routing  the  Canal  Ring  ho  will  bo  supported  by  all 
"  honest  citizens." 

(c.j — The  very  man  for  the  Crisis — then? — Why  then,  my 
excellent  and  eloquent  friend,  should  ho  not  bo  sup 
ported  by  all  honest;  citizens  in  the  course  that  ho  pro 
poses  to  take  "for  defying,  exposing  and  routing"  the  much 
larger  and  more  damaging  rings  that  encircle  and  fetter  every 
limb  of  the  Federal  administration?  Ho  has  the  "instinct" 
you  allege  ;  he  has  "the  ability";  lie  has  "  the  integrity ";  ho 
has  "  the  courage  ";  ho  has  "the  experience";  ho  has  every 
quality  for  a  "  bold,  radical  and  intelligent  assault  upon  en 
trenched  abuses,"  jyad  is  ho  not  then  the  very  man  ?  With 
his  exceptional  knowledge  of  finance  and  kindred  subjects  of 
political  economy;  with  his  rare  talent  for  business,  which  is 
universally  conceded  by  capitalists  and  business  men  ;  and 
with  his  definite  Convictions  as  to  the  problems  which  perplex 


28 

•our  statesmanship  ;  with  all  these  added  to  the  qualities  which 
Mr.  Curtis  ascribes  to  him,  the  answer  leaps  to  the  eyes,  the 
"Hour  and  the  Man"  have  met. 

(3.) — Consequences  of  Mr.  TiWen's  Success. — Yes  ;  let  Gov 
ernor  Tilclen  be  elected  to  the  Chief  Magistracy,  and  I  should 
look  with  as  much  confidence,  as  it  is  possible  to  contem 
plate  events  that  are  future,  to  these  grand  and  desirable 
results  ;  I  should  expect  a  rigid  retrenchment  of  the  pub 
lic  expenditures  and  new  economies  introduced  into  every 
"branch  of  public  business  ;  1  should  expect  the  introduction  of 
that  systematic  method  of  taxation  that  science  and  experience 
alike  approve  ;  I  should  expect  a  regeneration  of  the  civil  ser 
vice,  according  to  the  luminous  view  of  the  Letter  of 
Acceptance,  which  would  comprise  (a)  the  elevation  of  the 
standard  of  appointment ;  (b)  conscientious  fidelity  in  the 
-exercise  of  the  power  to  remove ;  (c)  the  abolition  of  unneces 
sary  and  parasitic  functions ;  (d)  and  the  organization  of  a 
system,  in  which  competence,  integrity  and  diligence — not  as 
now,  mercenary,  personal  and  partisan  services — should  be  the 
sole  test  of  eligibility.  I  should  expect' the  restoration  of  our 
finances,  including  the  currency,  by  a  series  of  clear-sighted, 
wisely-devised,  nicely  graduated  measures,  that  would  bring  us 
to  a  normal  condition,  without  convulsion  or  injury  to  trade, 
and  yet  with  an  assurance  of  movement  to  which  every  interest 
might  easily  be  adapted  and  conformed  ;  and,  finally,  I  should 
expect  a  conciliation  of  the  entire  South  by  a  firm  protection 
of  the  rights  of  all,  which,  while  it  would  take  away  the  heavy 
arm  of  interference,  would  open  the  channels  through  which 
our  stagnant  Northern  capital  would  flow  in  fertilizing  streams 
over  its  parched  and  barren  deserts,  and  the  hands  now  raised 
against  each  other  in  menace  would  be  toojbusy  for  any  work 
-but  that  of  peaceful,  useful  labor. 

VI. — THE  EX-CONFEDEEATE   SPECTKE. 

The  South  !  aye,  that  is  it !  "  Prythee  !  see  there  !  look  !  be 
hold  !"  the  Ex-Confederates  !  I  look,  and  see  large  squads  of 
placemen,  raising  a  cry  of  alarm  to  divert  the  gaze  of  the  public 
from  their  own  peculations  and  frauds.  jBehind  them  I  see  a 
crowd  of  credulous  and  long-eared  followers,  who  people 
the  vacancy  with  phantoms  that  exist  only  inj  their  own  fears. 
As  I  approach  more  nearly,  the  embodied  Awe,  the  incarnate 
Dread,  the  mysterious  Gorgon,  resolves  into  aVscooped  pump- 


29 

tin  with  a  candle  in  it,  shining  through  the  mist.  What,  in 
the  name  of  all  the  stuffed  and  ragged  scarecrows  that  ever 
fluttered,  are  these  Ex-Confederates  going  to  do?  What  can 
they  do?  "  Re-enslave  the  freedmen  !"  stammers  one  ;  yes  I 
answer,  when  the  instinct  of  justice  is  stifled  in  every  American 
heart,  and  the  demon  of  despotism  sits  triumphant  on  the  ruins 
of  our  most  cherished  institutions.  "  Recognize  the  rebel  debt," 
whispers  another  ;  yes,  when  it  is  carried  through  by  two-thirds 
of  each  House  of  Congress  and  three-fourths  of  all  the  States, 
which  will  be  when  Bismarck  is  cannonized  by  the  College  of 
Cardinals,  or  Sitting  Bull  appointed  to  the  place  of  General 
Sherman.  "  Pile  up  claims  for  losses  incurred  in  the  Rebellion,'1 
mutters  a  third  ;  yes  ;  and  the  higher  they  are  piled  the  more 
Bure  they  are  to  topple,  and  surest  of  all  under  the  Democratic 
policy  of  economy  and  retrenchment.  Pshaw !  these  are  the 
shallow  devices  of  electioneering  zeal,  and  no  more  worthy  of 
heed  than  the  cry  of  the  fellow  who  halloed  fire  in  the  midst  of 
the  deluge. 

(1.) — A  Creation  of  Guilty  Consciences. — I,  however,  do 
not  wonder  that  the  South,  like  Banquo's  ghost,  should  fill 
the  Republican  leaders  with  alarm.  When  she  rises  before 
them — pale,  dishevelled  and  broken — their  guilty  consciences, 
if  they  have  any,  must  sting  and  tremble.  Of  all  the  mis 
deeds  of  partisan  greed  and  malignity,  there  is  none  more 
foul  and  atrocious  than  that  which  has  tried  to  enforce  a 
foreign  and  corrupt  despotism  upon  the  Southern  people. 
For  a  parallel  to  it  we  must  look  to  the  doings  of  Austria 
in  Italy,  or  of  Great  Britain,  aforetime,  in  Ireland  The 
South  came  out  of  the  war  prostrate  and  benumbed ;  her 
capital  was  gone  ;  her  labor  annihilated  ;  her  social  system  up- 
ruoted  and^destroyed.  She  had  fought  for  a  false  idea — fought 
bravely,  fought  desperately — frantically  and  cruelly  sometimes; 
but  she  had  fought  in  vain.  Her  cause  was  lost — and  lost  for 
ever.  It  was  lost,  not  as  a  fact  merely,  but  as  an  illusion.  Every 
discerning  mind  saw  that  for  her  nothing  was  left  but  to  gather 
up  the  wreck,  restore  the  waste  places,  and  to  re-knit  the  broken 
ties.  A  few  lingering  rancors,  born  of  the  contest,  flickered 
here  and  there,  impotent  as  they  were  foolish,  but  the  deeper 
antagonisms  were  all  crushed.  For  us,  as  for  them,  the  single 
duty  of  the  hour,  imposed  by  a  regard  to  the  common  prosperity, 
as  well  as  by  a  sentiment  of  kindliness,  was,  in  the  fine  lan 
guage  of  Governor  Andrew,  "to  prosecute  peace  as  vigorously 
as  we  had  prosecuted  war."  So  that,  where  oncu  <iil  day  "  the 


30 

noise  of  battle  roller!,"  should  be  heard  again  the  melodies 
of  joy  and  concord,  ringing  like  a  chorus  of  birds  when  the 
black  storm  clouds  are  past. 

The  South  was,  peculiarly,  repentant  and  placable.  General 
Grant  himself,  in  a  report  made  soon  after  the  war,  bore  evi 
dence  of  the  universal  desire  of  the  people  for  the  resumption 
of  friendly  relations.  General  Dix,  Henry  J.  Raymond,  and  a 
hundred  other  Republicans,  assembled  at  Philadelphia  to  pro 
mote  a  fraternal  feeling,  said  :  "  The  concurrent  testimony  of 
"  those  best  acquainted  with  the  condition  of  society  and  the 
"  state  of  public  sentiment  in  the  South,  establishes  the  fact 
"  that  the  great  mass  of  the  Southern  people  accept,  with  as 
"  fall  and  sincere  submission  as  do  the  people  of  the  other 
"  States,  the  re-established  supremacy  of  the  national  authority, 
"  and  are  prepared  in  the  most  loyal  spirit  and  with  a  zeal 
"  quickened  alike  by  their  interest  and  pride,  to  co-operate 
"  with  other  States  in  whatever  may  be  necessary  to  defend 
"  the  rights,  maintain  the  issues,  and  promote  the  welfare  of 
ct  the  common  country." 

Such  the  promises  of  the  dawn  after  a  dark  and  stormy  night ; 
full  of  hope  and  cheer  and  brightness ;  but  ere  long  base  clouds 
and  rack  and  rotten  smoke  thickened  the  air  and  stained  the 
skies.  "Whence  the  change  ?  You  know  its  history  ;  I  shall  not 
repeat  it ;  Professor  Sumner,  in  his  able  and  impressive  letter, 
has  said  all  that  needs  to  be  said  ;  there  stands  the  salient  facts  | 
You  know  how  miscreant  adventurers — the  scum  and  offscouring 
of  the  North — sowed  the  seeds  of  division  among  the  races  ; 
you  know  how  successive  flights  of  these  birds  of  prey,  "  with 
appetites  continually  renewing  for  food  continually  wanting," 
consumed  the  little  substance  which  Avar  had  spared;  and 
you  know  that  once  in  power  they  turned  every  agency  of 
government  into  a  means  of  robbery  and  spoliation.  The  un 
happy  States  they  sequestered  became  like  provinces  of  the 
Indian  Empire,  in  the  time  of  a  Hastings  or  a  Olive,  saving 
that  this  record  of  vulgar  rapacity  was  unbroken  by  one  mark 
of  high  ability  or  one  act  of  generous  forbearance.  What  is 
V7orse,  this  ascendency  of  conspiring  scoundrels,  which  insulted 
and  exiled  the  whites,  "  the  natural  leaders  of  society,"  . 
which  debauched  and  misled  the  blacks,  and  which  for  ten 
years  has  kept  open  a  seething  cauldron  of  turbulence,  blood 
and  anarchy,  was  sustained  by  the  Federal  Government  with 
our  money  and  our  arms.  Oh  !  the  cruelty  of  it ;  oh !  the 
shame  of  it.  Once  ifc  was  our  boast  that  a  handful  of  Ameri 
cans,  chance  thrown  upon  a  desert  coast,  or  meeting  by  acci- 


31 

dent  in  a  wilderness,  would  improvise  a  fabric  of  stable  and 
orderly  government ;  but  here  wo  have  a  powerful  party,  with 
every  means  and  appliance  at  its  control,  utterly  impotent  to 
maintain  a  decent  order  in  societies  long  inured  to  freedom 
and  self-management ;  and  proclaiming,  at  the  end  of  ten  years 
of  trial,  through  the  mouth  of  its  Boutwell,  that  it  sees  no 
remedy  but  in  military  force,  or  in  remanding  those  States  to 
the  condition  of  Territories ;  while  its  President,  on  tho  hun 
dredth  anniversary  of  our  popular  institutions,  tells  the  assem 
bled  world  that  free  elections  are  possible,  in  half  of  tho  Union, 
only  under  a  menace  of  bayonets. 

(2.) — The  South  not  to  be  Feared. — Now,  I  have  no  fears  of 
the  South  ;  on  the  contrary,  I  have  every  reasonable  confi 
dence  in  the  South.  Is  there,  indeed,  any  longer  a  South  in 
any  distinctive  sense?  The  only  cause  of  sectional  division 
that  ever  existed — slavery — is  gone,  and  the  shadow  of  it  hardly 
remains.  "We  are  united  now,  in  interest,  in  feeling,  in  nation 
ality,  and  in  civilization,  as  we  were  never  before  united.  We 
are  all  Americans,  without  regard  to  locality ;  wo  are  all  citizens, 
without  regard  to  condition  ;  and  if  the  States  once  disaffected 
are  returned  to  that  freedom  of  self  rule  which  obtains  in  the 
other  States,  their  unhappy  color  divisions  which  have  been 
factitiously  excited  and  fostered  will  melt  into  the  simple  poli 
tical  divisions  of  our  own  peaceful  communities.  They  will 
engage  in  the  same  discussions,  follow  tho  banners  of  the  same 
parties  ;  and  whites  and  blacks,  sharing  in  the  same  rights  and 
interests,  will  go  marching  forward,  side  by  side,  to  the  same 
great  national  ends.  Or,  if  there  should  be  a  difference,  it 
would  bo  perhaps  in  this — their  superior  warmth  of  devotion 
to  tho  cause  of  equal  laws  and  impartial  legislation.  They 
have  felt  with  peculiar  anguish — they  have  borne  with  peculiat 
patience — the  miseries  of  a  long  misrule ;  and  will  they  not 
value  with  peculiar  affection  tho  needs  of  peace,  and  the 
blessings  of  upright  government  ?  Where  tho  blood  of  Wash 
ington,  Jefferson,  Madison  and  Marshall  still  circulates — where 
the  intellects  of  Lowndes,  Gaston  and  Pettigru  are  still  revered, 
the  civic  virtues,  which  are  the  salvation  and  the  ornament  of 
Slates,  can  not  wholly  be  extinguished. 

Away,  then,  with  that  culture  of  distrust  and  hatred,  which, 
like  a  malarious  swamp,  can  nourish  no  seeds  of  good,  can  dif 
fuse  only  the  germs  of  blight  and  death  !  The  late  Mr.  Sum- 
ner,  whose  devotion  to  his  cause  was  like  tho  zeal  of  a  lover 
was  yet  unwilling  that  trophies  of  victory  won  by  citizeii  over 
citizen  should  be  preserved  among  the  national  archives  ;  and 


32 

shall  we,  less  magnanimous  than  that  great  soul,  insist,  like 
pagan  conquerors,  upon  dragging  our  victims,  lashed  to  the 
wheels  of  our  triumphal  chariots,  amid  the  jeers  of  a  rabble  ? 
Or,  baser  still,  in  the  dark  fanaticism  of  the  middle  ages,  turn 
their  skins  into  drums  whereon  to  beat  the  tattoo  of  hellish 
partisan  rallies  ?  Are  we  Christians  ?  Are  we  patriots  ?  Are 
we  men  ?  Or,  do  the  vestiges  of  the  brute  and  the  savage, 
from  which,  according  to  modern  theories,  we  are  evolved,  still 
survive  in  our  veins  ? 

(4.) — A  Coll  for  Centennial  Concord  and  Peace. — No  ;  our 
Democratic  civilization,  illustrated  by  many  a  heroic  deed,  has 
none  more  noble  than  the  closing  scenes  of  the  war,  when 
on  the  one  side,  a  vast  and  victorious  army,  dispersed  to  its 
peaceful  avocations,  like  mists  of  night  melting  in  the  sun 
rise  ;  and,  on  the  other  side,  a  gallant,  but  stricken  foe,  re 
sumed  their  allegiance  to  a  polity  which  brought  with  it  the 
most  tremendous  social  and  political  change  ever  wrought  in 
any  human  society.  The  sublimity,  the  magnificence,  the  glory 
of  that  great  conclusion  can  never  be  lessened  ;  but  as  the 
French  proverb  has  it,  noblesse  oblige,  and  our  nobility  now 
obliges  us  to  add  to  this  antecedent  the  greater  triumph  of 
a  complete  and  heartfelt  reconciliation,  Civil  war,  everywhere 
and  always,  proverbial  for  the  inveteracy  of  its  venom,  often 
passing  from  generation  to  generation  with  the  blood,  shall  here 
become  a  savor  of  life  unto  life,  not  of  death  unto  death.  By 
the  blessing  of  God  and  the  magnanimity  of  the  people,  its  bale 
ful  fires  shall  not  smoulder  in  their  ashes,  but  be  extinguished 
by  their  ashes.  By  the  blessing  of  God  and  the  magnamity  of 
the  people,  this  centennial  year,  this  hundredth  birthday  of  the 
time  which  saw  the  self-sacrifice  and  devotion  of  the  fathers 
shall  seal  the  bond  of  on  indissoluble  unity  among  the  child 
ren.  It  shall  be  a  year  not  of  enmity  and  alienation,  but  of 
sweet  renewals  and  generous  affections.  The  g?nius  of  harmony 
shall  inspire  it,  and  a  loving  concord  shall  bless  it !  Amen  I 
Amen !  and  again  I  say,  Amen  !  From  the  dark  mounds  where 
our  common  parents  lie  buried,  corne  ten  thousand  hallowed 
voices  which  cry  to  us,  Amen  !  In  the  future,  too,  I  see  the 
form  of  the  Republic,  still  young  and  beautiful  and  strong,  and 
I  hear  the  immortal  music  of  her  lips  as  they  send  back, 
Amen  !  Let  every  American  heart,  then,  repeat  the  solemn 
adjuration,  till  it  fills  every  valley  and  echoes  from  every  hill 
top,  and  rises  like  a  majestic  anthem  of  the  people,  to  meet 
the  responses  of  the  choiring  Heavens :  Amen ! 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall 


28Jun'60B  S 


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THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


